March brought me to London for an in-person SRP Council meeting. It was an eventful trip, involving a missed flight and a missed train to London. The plan had been to fly over on the Saturday before the meeting, to Manchester and to spend some time in Leeds and Manchester before heading down to “The Big Smoke” for the meeting.

The flight on Saturday was at 12:20 and would have got us to Manchester in perfect time to head to Leeds on the train and to go to watch a friend of my husband’s, Iago Banet, a university friend from Spain who now lives in London, play an acoustic guitar gig in Otley (about 20 minutes away from my parents’ house). We’d bought tickets for my parents and brother as well, so the plan was to go for food before and then head to the concert together. All was going well, we woke up early, had breakfast and started to pack, both in our heads knowing that we had to leave at 10:30 latest.

Plenty of time! Until it wasn’t!

This has never happened before, but for some reason we both had the wrong time in our heads, an hour too late! It dawned on me in a panic at 10:20 whereupon we both realised that it was pointless even trying to get to the airport on time as we had missed the flight. My husband was especially upset. Turning up at the gig was going to be a surprise for his musician friend who he’d not seen in years. There was another flight that day, but at 17:00, therefore getting into Manchester at 18:35, the gig starting at 19:00. So, defeatedly, he texted his friend to say that this had been the plan, however unfortunately it wasn’t going to happen today. Iago was also equally sad about the situation. So, we booked the later flight, resigned to the fact we’d miss the gig, hanging out at home before setting off in extra good time to the airport that afternoon. As we flew, I started to get one of my ideas. What if we rented a car and drove straight over to the venue? 1 hour and 20 minutes driving.

“Ask Iago how long he’s playing for… is there an interval?”.

“There is! He says to drive fast!”.

I quickly booked a hire car and went to pick it up. A tiny Fiat 500, wonderful for sauntering around the roads of Ispra, Italy, on work trips in my youth 😉 however not so much made for speed on the M62… but we made it. As we parked up, we could see the mingling people on their interval break heading back into the hall. Luckly Iago had told the venue staff that his friends were flying in to try and make the show so when we bundled in, a little dishevelled from the rush of the journey, they knew immediately that we were the reprobates Iago had been waiting for and took us up onto the balcony for some VIP seats with the sound engineer. It was worth it. The second half of the show was brilliant. Excellent music, a bit of comedy, and very very entertaining, a great evening after all (shameless plug here, check him out).

Sunday was then Mother’s Day, so brownie points to me for being back for it, and Tuesday 12^th March is also my mum’s birthday (as well as the fabulous past SRP President Amber Bannon, Happy Birthday Amber!), so we all had a lovely lunch in Manchester with my aunt and uncle meeting us there. We then spent a couple of nights in Manchester so I could go into the office and make sure they’ve not forgotten me, before taking the train to London that evening for the Council meeting the next day

Unbeknownst to us, our travel woe wasn’t over at this point, and I ended up leaving work a bit later than I should have, which would have been fine, only the car hire company overcharged me by £100 so I spent far too long arguing that with the staff (got it back eventually), and so we also ended up missing the train to London! Not the end of the world, but another expensive mistake to make. But we had some food in Manchester and then jumped on the next one and made it eventually.

Thursday 14^th March was the Council meeting, which was really productive, and we made quite a few key decisions on Engagement matters. It was also a little bittersweet as we had to say a huge thank you and farewell to Chris Perks, Jill Reay and Jim Thurston as they have all served their terms in full now and were leaving Council. They will be missed (we had cake to soften the blow).

We then spent a great couple of days in London, trying out a Korean BBQ, KOBA, and Ottolenghi’s ROVI restaurant, both excellent, and meeting Iago’s partner and young son for a wander around Southbank on a very sunny Saturday morning.

Luckily, bad travel luck does not seem to come in threes, and the flight back from London to Spain on the Saturday evening was completely uneventful!

Until next month. You can contact me on the usual:

engagement@srp-uk.org
Twitter: chai_khaneh
Instagram: Saragoli